Painkiller: Overdose Review

Highway to Hell.

Painkiller: Overdose is a throwback of sorts, to a time when the phrase "first-person shooter" meant only that&#Array;the shooting of stuff from a first-person perspective. No confusing rules, no weirdo storylines, no RPG or adventure elements. Just tons of demons and/or monsters, almost as many forms of weapons, buckets of good old-fashioned blood, and more severed body parts than a chop shop. Like DOOM, Quake and all those other straight-up shooters before it, Overdose is all about high-speed mouse skill, twitch reflexes, and inherent aggression. Though it feels a bit more dated than its Painkiller predecessors&#Array;the series began in 2004&#Array;the latest installment nevertheless manages to crank out a gory, fast-paced good time that should please anyone with a strong distaste for murderous beasts from hell.

Actually, it's not quite hell. Overdose purportedly takes place in purgatory, a bizarre place between heaven and hell that doles out as much horror and harbors as many freakish ghouls as your doctor's waiting room. That the game's definition of purgatory&#Array;a series of environments seemingly plucked ad hoc from across this big, wide world of ours&#Array;doesn't quite jibe with traditional values and doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Who really cares if you're fighting in a Japanese tea room, a desert gorge, or in the midst of some ancient ruins as long as it looks good and delivers the thrills? For the most part, Overdose does both.

As "Belial, son of Heaven and Hell," you're a half-demon, half-angel waging war against Lucifer, who imprisoned you here, and all his henchmen and hench-women. You stroll through the world, room to room or zone to zone, wasting everything you see. Each time you enter a new space, a gate or door swings shut behind you and the monsters come out to play. You are then expected to annihilate all attackers in order to open the next door to the next space.

Unlike so many games of this ilk, there are no doors to unlock or tedious puzzles to beat. You can save at any time, and the game often covers for you by saving automatically at regular intervals.

The key to Overdose is variety. For example, each of the game's seventeen levels and indeed many of the rooms and spaces within each of those levels feel and look impressively distinct from the next. One minute you're trapped in a darkened dungeon of some sort, battling the no-goodniks as much as the claustrophobia. The next minute you might be on a wooden walkway suspended over water or making your way over a sand dune or fighting your way through a rotting Grecian courtyard.

The sense of size and space is strong throughout. Towering above you are columns and mountain tops, decorative ceilings and strangely-colored skies. Beneath you are bottomless crevices of fire and murky oceans that'll swallow you whole. Boxes and barrels containing ammunition refills abound, as do vases&#Array;many with bloodied body parts inside.

But that's just a hint of the gore that awaits. Bleeding, disfigured skeletons lurch toward you, only to be blown to smithereens. Asian kung-fu masters somersault in front of you, even with the harpoon you've just launched at them sticking out of their eyeballs. And should you crank the difficulty level to "Trauma," there are so many monsters and so much carnage that the floor is literally coated with blood and assorted entrails.

The interplay between beast (be it insect, animal, robot, mutant human, giant, etc, etc) and weapon also helps keep things interesting. Some enemies just fall to pieces with the slicing and dicing "hell cube," a near-magical device and holdover from past Painkillers that does all sorts of wacky things. Others are dispatched nicely with a crossbow to the brain.